Building Initiative were invited by CUBE to exhibit their ongoing project Yellow Space. Yellow Space has now been extended to include newly commissioned research on Manchester city’s recent urban development. Building Initiative has developed Yellow Trail, a critical walking trail that explores Manchester’s contemporary zones of transition, creating an opportunity to reflect on social space and public life in the city.
Building Initiative uses the concept of ‘Yellow Space’ as a metaphor for shared social space within the public domain. These spaces are crucial for cities as urban life depends on sharing. Those who share the facilities of the city directly benefit from the pooling of resources. Today, the shared spaces and services of cities everywhere are fragmenting and splintering for different economic, political and social reasons.
The exhibition at CUBE aims to develop public consciousness of these social space issues. It will present research on Belfast and Manchester in addition to a number of successful social, environmental, and construction projects from other cities. These projects attempt to explain alternative approaches, for example planning from the ‘bottom up’ as opposed to ‘top down’. At present, members of Building Initiative are developing a participatory design project for a community centre ‘Woodvale HUB’ in Belfast, which will also be presented.
The show will be accompanied by a new issue of the Building Initiative newspaper, Yellow Press. Previous versions of the Yellow Space exhibition were shown at ‘Belfast Exposed Gallery’ in 2006 and at ‘Entry 2006’ in Essen, Germany.
